BANT

Each letter asks a question. Budget: can the prospect pay for a solution like yours? Authority: does the person in front of you decide, and if not, who does? Need: does the problem really exist, and does it matter enough to be dealt with? Timeline: when do they plan to act?

The method is associated with IBM, which used it to sort its sales opportunities. Its purpose hasn't changed: avoid spending weeks on a deal that can't close, for lack of money, a decision-maker, a need or a deadline.

BANT is for qualifying, not prospecting. It comes in once the conversation is open, during the exchanges and then the discovery call, never in a first message.

The order of the letters is not the order of the questions. Start with the need, always. Nobody wants to talk money with a stranger who hasn't understood their problem yet.

Ask open questions tied to their day-to-day. For need: "How do you handle this today? Where does it get stuck?". For authority: "If you decided to change, who else would be involved?". For timeline: "Is there a deadline that makes this urgent?". For budget: "Have you already invested in this area?".

On LinkedIn, one question per message is enough. Three questions in a row turn the conversation into a form, and the person stops replying.

You don't need all four answers before suggesting a call. In B2B sales, the discovery call is where qualification gets finished. A real need and the right contact are often enough to propose it.

Look at what happens after the meeting. If many calls end with "no budget this year" or "I'm not the one who decides", your upfront qualification is too light. If almost no prospect gets through while your target is right, it is too strict.

Write down the reason for every lost deal and file it under one letter. After a few dozen deals you'll see which letter costs you most. That's the one to check earlier.

Track the meeting show rate and how often a call turns into a proposal. A well-qualified meeting is more likely to be attended and to lead to a proposal. If both numbers are low while your calendar is full, you are booking conversations, not opportunities.

Budget rarely exists before the need is recognised. In many B2B purchases, the conversation is what creates the budget. Disqualifying a prospect because they have no line item set aside means dropping buyers who would have found one.

Authority is often shared. A purchase goes through several people: the one who uses it, the one who pays, the one who signs off. Hunting for "the" single decision-maker can make you lose sight of the person driving the project internally.

Other methods fix those blind spots. CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization) puts problems first. MEDDIC, designed for complex sales, adds decision criteria, the buying process and the internal champion.

The real risk is mechanical use: four boxes to tick, in order, from the first messages. Prospects notice when they're being processed rather than listened to.

When a prospect replies, MimikFlow's AI Setter understands objections, asks the useful questions and moves the conversation toward your goal, usually a meeting. You can give it your own qualification questions, and a stop condition: when the prospect's situation matches it, the conversation comes back to you.

A sensitive request, a negotiation or an ambiguous situation lands in your inbox with the full history. Detailed qualification, budget included, stays for the call.